This has all the makings of a tempest in a Nutella jar, which may not be as appealing as a Nutella milkshake, Nutella fudge or Nutella-stuffed French toast. Or stolen Nutella, which, apparently, has mouthwatering appeal at Columbia University.

Last month one of Columbias undergraduate dining halls began serving Nutella every day, not just in crepes on weekends. For the uninitiated, Nutella is a creamier-than-peanut-butter, chocolate hazelnut spread from Italy that a college student might eat a whole jar of in a single sitting when the pressure is on.

The problem was that the Columbia students went through jars and jars of Nutella  at least 100 pounds a day, according to a freshman member of the Columbia College Student Council who had urged the universitys Dining Services operation to provide it in the first place. Apparently they were not just eating it in the dining hall. They were spiriting it away in soup containers and other receptacles, to be eaten later.

For Dining Services, the unexpected demand was an unexpected expense. And before you could say chocolate-covered Nutella marshmallow cookies, the council member, Peter Bailinson, heard from Vicki Dunn, the executive director of Dining Services. The subject was how much Nutella students were taking back to their dorms, or wherever they were taking it, and how much all that Nutella was costing.

People take silverware, cups and plates, and that adds up over the course of a year to a lot of money, he said. With Nutella, it added up much more quickly. Where Dining might have to spend $50,000 to replace silverware and cups, they were spending thousands of dollars on Nutella in one week.

I have been buying it for years when the lonesome, dusty jars were idling on the shelf. However, you can pin its new-found popularity on Giada from the Food Network. Her family is Italian and she has used it often in her recipes. They must have noticed an uptick in their sales, because a couple of years ago they started advertising in the US, and voila!

It’s become so popular that JIF recently came out with a version...so I think it’s here to stay.

I have a small bottle of “mocha cappuccino” made by Jif. It has hazelnuts and chocolate flavor. The stuff is awful. This 14.1 oz bottle has been sitting around for a year, while we have gone through a dozen bottles of Jif peanut butter bigger in size in the same time. The “mocha” stuff has sugar as 1st ingredient. That makes it eminently unhealthy. And only 2 grams of protein in a serving of 2 tbsp with 21 grams of sugar. Whereas peanut butter has 3 gm of sugar and 7 gm of protein.

Stick with the peanut butter.

15
posted on 03/08/2013 12:21:38 AM PST
by entropy12
(The republic is doomed cuz people have figured out they can get free stuff by voting democrats)

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